It Started in the Field: Two undergraduates, one Toyota Yaris, 30 nights deep in the Thai jungle.
The unlikely origin story of MINML, and the three Cambridge Earth Scientists behind it.
MINML doesn't have a traditional founding story.
Two undergraduates, one Toyota Yaris, 30 nights deep in the Thai jungle.
Okay, maybe it does. A lot of science-first tech startups emerge from academic research, and MINML is proud of its Cambridge heritage (126 Nobel Prize winners and a wealth of successful start-ups). But our founding story also involves being tracked through the Thai jungle by an armed park ranger, a trip deep into tiger territory, some extreme off-roading, and coaxing a lecturer out of the grasp of a major competitor.
Things have calmed down a lot since then. But every great company needs a great origin story. So, here's ours.
The story starts on an undergraduate field trip to Cornwall. On the six-hour bus journey from Cambridge University's Earth Sciences department, Archie Taylor met Oliver Crofts, two fresh-faced undergraduates excitedly anticipating a visit to one of Britain's oldest slate mines. Exhilarating!
Over the days that followed, Archie and Oliver became fieldwork partners. A partnership that would take them across the world, from the foothills of Nepal to the boulangeries of southern France.
As finalists, the pair set out on what they thought would be their final adventure. Little did they know what would follow.
30 nights in the Thai jungle. Two undergraduates, one Toyota Yaris, and four weeks of water sampling for their dissertations. Days and nights spent trekking to and from streams throughout the jungle, collecting geochemical water signatures.
Oliver opted for a safe bet. Basic geochemical regression analysis. The grade was in the bag. Archie decided to be unconventional. Why not build a machine learning model to infer the underlying geology?
Lo and behold, it worked.
You're probably still wondering where the gun-strapped park ranger comes in. Don't worry, it wasn't for anything they'd done. They'd simply wandered deep into tiger territory and were encouraged to move on at speed. The Yaris, for the record, made the off-road getaway.
Back in Cambridge, Archie didn't let his interest fade. He committed to developing the model, every day folding in new techniques from the frontier of machine learning. A few months later, he showed Oliver. Could there be a business here?
30 nights in the Thai jungle. Two undergraduates, one Toyota Yaris, and four weeks of water sampling for their dissertations.
The pair divided the roles, Archie as CTO and Oliver as CEO, and set out in search of a Chief Science Officer. MINML is a geology company, after all.
Angus Fotherby was in the final year of his PhD. His research focused on modelling basalt alteration geochemistry across a variety of contexts, from direct air carbon capture to the mid-ocean ridge.
He had also spent the previous three years lecturing and supervising the two, now master's, students. They cornered him post-supervision on a quiet Friday afternoon in the courtyard of Trinity Hall, overlooking the River Cam. With his research almost complete, Angus was considering starting his next chapter at one of the leading AI mining companies in the space. Wouldn't it be more fun to build one himself?
The three Cambridge Earth Scientists shook hands, each with a unique skillset, but a shared conviction that cutting-edge technology and diligent earth science could revolutionise the critical mineral supply chain.
MINML was incorporated in December 2025.
Today, MINML operates across the exploration pipeline. The way the world finds minerals hasn't changed in decades. Incumbent exploration is slow, expensive, and largely a game of educated guesswork. Most drill holes come up empty.
MINML is the antithesis of all of that. We build explainable AI that runs on the messy, incomplete, real-world data exploration produces, and grounds every prediction in geological first principles. The result is fewer dry holes, faster decisions, and a critical mineral supply chain built on evidence rather than instinct.
Our ambition is to revolutionise the exploration industry using frontier technology. Every day, we get closer to this vision.